SHOES help explore the characteristics of globalisation: production by Global South factory and homeworkers, rampant consumerism and the mountains of waste it produces, the illusions conjured by capitalism, migration flows and barriers, biosphere exploitation, the lack of legal protections and the onset of a techno-future.

Tracing the production of shoes reveals how we came to face such crises today. But there is one further characteristic of globalisation.

Where there is oppression and destruction, there is also resistance. My book Foot Work would have been incomplete without an exploration of the fact that people are pushing back against the erosion of their rights and are challenging transnational corporations, oppressive factory owners, environmental violations and unjust governments.

AT 20, Kristina Ampeva had long left school, endured a violent, unhappy marriage and been plunged into a custody battle.

Reaching for her lighter, she describes how the courts told her she needed a job if she wanted to take care of her baby daughter. Kristina’s phone rings and she answers it, standing up to pace around her living room. On the phone is a worker in the midst of suing his former employer. He needs advice.

The view from Kristina’s balcony in North Macedonia is of Stip, a red-roofed sweep of a town that curves along a green mountain valley. Brightly coloured primary schools bustle with children and the streets are tree-lined. The city’s 16,000 university students walk the river promenade and hang out in cafes.

High on a hill overlooking Stip is a giant metal-girder cross. The steep trail of steps up the hill serve as a memorial, flanked by white marble blocks carved with the names of young men who died fighting in the second world war. The hill has become a hangout spot. Marble memorials to the war dead are covered in graffiti about sex, drugs and the spurious advantages of not having feelings. In red, someone has written: ‘I AM A BO$$ U A WORKER BITCH.’

With its industrial heritage, Stip has been called the ‘Manchester of Macedonia’. Approximately 80 textile factories employ between 15 and 200 people each. From the top of the hill, you can see the town’s factory district, buildings one or two storeys high, built in the boom time of Yugoslavia.

It was in one of these factories that Kristina found a job many years ago. Hanging up the phone, she describes how all of a sudden she had health insurance, a pension and a salary coming in on the fifteenth of each month. ‘It was good, I had a job, I could raise a child, I could show the court,’ Kristina says.

‘But even after a few days I was telling myself, what are you doing here? All that yelling: “You stupid woman, you can’t sew, you don’t know anything, you can’t work with machines.”’

For four months Kristina took home a tiny trainee salary of under €60. She kept quiet, doing what she was told to keep her job. She lights her next cigarette with a smile, describing how over the next four years she met her husband Denis and became pregnant with her second child.

Though things were better, the work was relentless. She argued with the women she worked alongside, telling them they should refuse to do overtime or work Saturdays.

‘I said let’s have a strike, let’s leave from this place — our working time is from 7 a.m. to 3 o’clock,’ Kristina recalls. ‘But the women next to me said, “They will fire us. Where will we work? We are older women, this is how it works in textile companies. We’re sorry you’re pregnant and young, but this is how it is, you’ll get used to it.”

‘But I never got used to it.’

Her phone rings again and she answers it, talking excitedly before returning to her story. In the summer after the birth of her second daughter, her older colleagues started fainting from high blood pressure. ‘We did thirty days with no break or rest because the partners in Europe were waiting for their order. Sunday, Saturday, national holidays, we were there. In September when my pay cheque arrived I got a salary of little more than €100 and I said – that’s it.’

Her next job was in a factory where 50 workers churned out 500 car seats a day. It was a big step up in terms of salary, but the work was gruelling and she still hated being yelled at all the time.

Experiencing more and more injustices around her, in healthcare and schooling for her children, Kristina became a community activist. ‘It was like, boom!’ she says, describing how all around her she suddenly saw social problems that were shrouded in silence. She was approached by a political opposition party to run a campaign on behalf of garment workers. In 2017, Kristina decided to found the independent Association Glasen Tekstilec, meaning Loud Textile Workers.

The small Association Glasen Tekstilec office in Stip is lined with red posters, its frosted glass door leads out onto a busy roundabout. There is a tiny bathroom and a gas stove with a coffee pot on a desk.

Constantly scraping money together, with more work than 20 people could do, Kristina is leading the fight to overhaul the garment and footwear industry in this small pocket of eastern Europe.

She has organised protests, implemented official factory inspections and co-ordinated collective challenges to the worst exploitation. She is advised and supported by trade unionists from other eastern European countries and by campaigners in Germany.

The idea of pushing for change is catching on. Arriving at the office is 26-year-old legal advisor Simona Maneva Zivkova. Simona gives free legal advice to factory workers. She acts as a conduit between intimidated workers who need to remain anonymous and the government-run Labour Inspectorate who can scrutinise factories and fine owners who break the law. Simona can also help workers navigate the gauntlet of legal documents needed to hold a strike.

Most importantly, however, Simona trains workers to deal with these responsibilities themselves. While factory owners would prefer for their workforce to remain ignorant of the law, Simona is creating a small team of worker paralegals.

So far, five factory workers have signed up to be secret legal representatives within the industry. One worker paralegal arrives to visit Simona and explains that they are motivated by a desire to learn about their rights and to help their colleagues. To maintain secrecy, worker paralegals tell people they have a friend who can help workers.

Issues already being challenged include a factory making workers return part of their wages in cash and a factory that makes orthopaedic shoes paying significantly beneath the minimum wage. Both Kristina and Simona are up against powerful industrial magnates, the biggest brands in Europe and a mostly unsympathetic political system.

But, as their base grows, so do their chances of success.

Footwork is published by Orion, £14.99.